New Solar Eclipse Pictures: See What You Missed

Share this gallery

Comment on this gallery

New Solar Eclipse Pictures: See What You Missed

1 / 12

Burning Ring of Fire

The sun is blotted from the sky over Queensland, Australia, during totality—when the moon completely obscures the sun during a solar eclipse—just after dawn on Wednesday, local time. This week's eclipse was one of the 21st century's most remote, visible only to a lucky few across the southern Pacific Ocean and Australia.

"The best place on land to see totality [was] along 62 miles [100 kilometers] of coastline on northeast Australia, overlooking the Great Barrier Reef and the Coral Sea," Jay Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College in Massachusetts, told National Geographic News. Anyone else would have had to have been on a ship.

American Hank Harper watches this week's total solar eclipse from the basket of a still-grounded hot-air balloon near Cairns, Australia—the only major city in the path of totality.

Harper and his children were among the many tourists who traveled to Australia to watch the sky show. "We watched the sun's rays reemerge from behind the moon while kangaroos hopped along the ground below," a happy Harper told the Associated Press.

Photograph courtesy Hot Air Balloon Cairns/AP Images

Day to Night

In Lakeland, Australia, a woman marvels at this week's solar eclipse, as humans have for thousands of years.

The earliest known recorded solar eclipse was charted in China around 2100 B.C. Because the sun symbolized Chinese emperors, its disappearance was long considered an important omen and even a dire warning. Chinese sky-watchers began keeping precise, dated eclipse records by 719 B.C. (Related: Eclipses in Ancient China Spurred Science, Beheadings?")

Photograph by David Barker, Tourism Queensland/AP Images

Solar Sparkler

A cosmic "diamond ring" glints over Australia as the sun reemerges after a total solar eclipse on Wednesday, Australia time.

During a solar eclipse, as the moon moves between Earth and the sun, the natural satellite's shadow is cast onto our planet. During this week's eclipse, only stargazers inside the moon's hundred-mile-wide (160-kilometers-wide) shadow saw the sun completely "disappear."

A hot-air balloon carrying eclipse-watchers soars near Cairns, Australia, Wednesday morning, local time. "The 50,000 to 60,000 visitors here for this event will be busily scoping out their favored spot if they haven’t already," said Queensland tourism official Jann Stuckey in an "eclipse eve" statement.

Totality began in Cairns at 6:38 a.m., local time, and lasted just over two minutes. Total solar eclipses happen about 75 times a century but are visible only from specific spots each time—which means that both tourists and scientists are often on the move when one is on tap.

For eclipse enthusiasts unable to reach Australia, the regional tourism board, among others, streamed the event live on their eclipse website.

Photograph by Maria Nguyen, Demotix

Solar Crescent

Once a source of wonder to the ancients, total solar eclipses—such as this one above Australia this week—are now quite predictable, because scientists can accurately measure the movements of the moon and Earth. But while a total solar eclipse occurs somewhere on Earth once every year or two, the chances of spotting one from any particular spot are fewer than once in a lifetime.

Photograph by Tunc Tezel, TWAN

Safety First

A boy watches the recent solar eclipse through a welder's mask near Cairns, Australia. Viewing an eclipse without adequate eye protection can cause serious damage and even blindness.

Total solar eclipses occur because of a cosmic coincidence. The moon's diameter and distance from us combine to produce a relative size that just covers the sun in our sky. If the moon were a bit smaller or farther away, only partial solar eclipses would be possible.

Slovak astronomer Vojtech Rusin, a National Geographic grantee, told National Geographic News's StarStruck blog that each solar eclipse, including this one over Australia, offers important new looks at the sun's corona, which affects Earth and its magnetic field.

"The shape of the sun’s corona is constantly changing, this change having a period of approximately 11 years (the solar cycle)," he said. This uppermost layer of the sun's atmosphere is "mainly affected by random distributions of magnetic fields on the solar surface entangled by the sun's rotation."

Photograph by Tunc Tezel, TWAN

Smiling Through

Over Cairns, clouds lent an eerie air to this week's solar eclipse but fortunately didn't obscure the event. During a solar eclipse, the moon's shadow races across the globe at 1,400 miles an hour (2,250 kilometers an hour). Only people directly in this 10,000-mile-long (16,000-kilometer-long) path can see the eclipse in totality.

Priceless to solar astronomers, a "diamond ring" appears over Lakeland Downs, Australia, during this week's total solar eclipse. After a total solar eclipse, full daylight is usually restored within about an hour. (Related: red lunar eclipse pictures.)

Photograph by Alan Dyer

Sunflower

The sun's corona is in full bloom during this week's total solar eclipse.

The fiery "halo" produced during solar eclipses allow scientists rare opportunities to study the sun's corona, or uppermost atmosphere, Pasachoff, the Williams College astronomer and National Geographic Society grantee, told National Geographic News.

"We get to study the motions and dynamics of the solar corona, the variations in temperature, the effect of the solar magnetic field on the corona, and other aspects that can only be done from the ground during an eclipse—not from a spacecraft."